Saturday, September 29, 2012

It’s
going to take a while to come close to describing the extent of the rape
hysteria in education, and how it often translates into a form of misandry –
sexism against men and boys – and often leads to a presumption of guilt against
men and boys who are wrongly accused of rape. Since this is a very
controversial issue and we’ll be dealing with a lot of information, I’d like to
list some core values upfront that I hope we can all agree on:

1.
There exists in the world both victims of rape and victims of wrongful
accusations of rape, and both deserve our compassion and support. To that end,
there is a balance to be maintained between the rights and dignity of accusers
and the rights and dignity of the accused. The presumption that accusers by
default are liars, or that the accused by default are guilty, is a form of
prejudice (prejudice meaning pre-judging)
that ultimately harms both sexes.

2.
Men and women have the right to advocate for victims of rape and victims of wrongful
rape accusations. It is not sexist to say that some women lie about rape any
more than it is sexist to say that some men rape. What is sexist is the idea
that we should exclude and silence an entire class of victims from the
discourse on gender equity.

3.
Most men do not rape. Most women do not lie about rape. What this means is that
generalizing about rape as part of “male culture” or “normative masculinity,”
or about rape lies as a part of “female culture” or “normative femininity,” or
any other phrase used to tar either sex with a broad brush, is not only not constructive,
but also veers very closely to hate speech. That does not mean that both rape
and false accusations of rape are not problems; they are problems. What it
means is that such behavior is not the norm for either sex, and we need to work
toward respecting each other by remembering that.

I
think this is a fairly reasonable and balanced set of values. And starting from
those values and discovering and owning up to where we stray from them will be
the litmus test in addressing the phenomenon of misandry against men and boys
in education. In every case of misandry, simply reverse the sexes and ask
yourself if it would be acceptable. And if we cannot say that such a role
reversal is morally justified, then something in academia needs to change.

It
is my belief that the indifference and hostility in education toward men and
boys wrongly accused of sexual misconduct started out as a genuine concern for
victims of sexual assault. But somewhere along the way that compassion and
advocacy for women transformed into a zero-sum game that divided men and women
into separate and antagonistic sides, where those who came to dominate the
discourse insisted that one “side” alone should prevail, and where advocacy for
victims of rape too often came to include silencing an entire class of victims:
those who are wrongly accused. Critics of those who advocate equality for men
and boys often falsely characterize them as wanting to turn back the clock. On
the contrary; we do not need to do away entirely with advocacy for women. What
we need to do is keep a lot of what we have while progressing beyond some of
the unhelpful and quite frankly sexist ways we go about it.

Given the stigma and
ostracism that often afflicts those wrongly accused, and the persistence with
which it will follow them (especially in the internet age), false and mistaken
accusations of sexual assault have the power to destroy their means of
educating themselves, making a living, creating loving and committed
relationships, and becoming successful and productive members of society. Men
and boys who are wrongly accused of sexual assault are spit upon, they are
harassed and intimidated with threats of violence or death; some are chased,
some are killed, and others kill themselves. In short, wrongful accusations
have the power to ruin not only individual lives, but fracture communities.
Therefore, it is something we need to take seriously. If you wish to learn more about victims of wrongful accusations of sexual
misconduct, please visit the Community of the Wrongly Accused, the world’s
largest blog giving a voice to victims of wrongful accusations.

The
real problem with rape hysteria is not the hyper-awareness of the incidence of
rape; it is the presumption of guilt against the person accused and the
destruction of their due process rights that often come with it. For this video
on rape hysteria by students, we’ll be focusing on what I believe to be, by
comparison, more moderate forms of misandry, and while I believe that some of what
we will discuss here, depending on your perspective, just slightly crosses the
border into misandry, I believe it’s important to discuss it, because when we
start talking more about faculty and administrators, we will see where the
students are getting some of their ideas.

Anarticle in the Baltimore Sun tells us, YOU ARE ACCUSED of a shameful crime. Your accuser is unnamed. The
time, place and circumstances of your crime are unspecified. No evidence is
presented. You are condemned.

This isn't Kafka. At
Brown University, a very liberal liberal-arts school in Rhode Island, a ''rape
list'' scrawled on the wall of a library women's room names ''men who have
sexually assaulted me or a woman I know.''

The
list,
started in October, names 30 men. As soon as janitors scrub the wall clean,
someone writes the ''rape list'' on it again.

Lisa Billowitz of Brown
Against Sexual Assault and Harassment calls the list ''an act of desperation in
an attempt to get Brown to act responsibly and provide us with a system where
we can air these grievances publicly as opposed to bathroom walls.''

Well
if that is true, then she got the first half of it right. The second half was
to condemn the idea of publicly branding 30 male students as rapists without
anyone knowing whether they were innocent or guilty. But that’s not something
she does. If anything, she makes rationalizations for it.

Anotherarticle in the Baltimore Sun asks, Are
nearly all male students at the University of Maryland "potential
rapists"? Women in a feminist art class
here apparently believe so. About 10 of them plastered the campus with fliers
last week listing the names of virtually every male student under the heading,
"NOTICE: THESE MEN ARE POTENTIAL RAPISTS." Their decision to walk
the murky line between libel and free speech sent the campus into an uproar.
Yesterday, reporters, photographers and TV crews flocked to the sprawling
campus in search of outraged students on both sides of the issue. University officials are
trying to determine whether some members of the "Current Issues in
Feminist Art" class or their teacher violated their codes of conduct, said
Roland H. King, the university's spokesman.

The project began as a
response to several sexual assaults on campus in the past year. To alert women
to the pervasiveness of rape, the art students prepared fliers with names
culled from the campus directory. Everyone with an
identifiably male name, such as Tom or Mohammed or John, ended up on an
alphabetized list. The women also set up large posters containing all of the
names on the grassy mall at the center of the campus, where masked women put on
an anti-rape play. They call themselves the Women's Coalition for Change but
have not revealed their names.

Mr. King said it is
unclear whether teacher Josephine Withers was involved in the project, which
was not listed on her outline for the course. She did not return phone calls
yesterday. The school administration
considers the display "inappropriate" and an error in judgment, Mr.
King said, but the case also raises thorny issues about free speech. "It certainly
touches on key First Amendment issues that colleges face all the time, which is
the balancing of individual rights with the right of free speech," he
said. "One of the things
that defines a college or university is that it's a forum where, more than in
society at large, you can debate ideas. To do that, you have to include the
people at the fringes as well as people at the center." When the students
attached names to their display, he said, they moved into a "very gray
area."

Sophomore Matthew Nowlin,
20, an aerospace engineering student, briefly considered suing when he found
his name on the "potential rapists" list, fearing that his character
had been impugned. It didn't take long for
him to feel the ramifications of being included on the list. A woman who walked
past him later that day looked at him with "fear in her eyes," he
said. Now, he just wants an
apology from the lists' authors. Yesterday, Mr. Nowlin helped organize a small
rally on campus to talk about sexual assault. "I want to turn away from
the anger this has caused and turn us back to the issue of violence on
campus," he said. The anger, however, is the point, said several women who
strongly supported the display but said they were not involved in it.

Erin Lane, 22, a senior
economics major, and several of her friends discussed the project outside the
Food Co-op in the student center. "A lot of people are very upset by it,
but I think if a man was secure he wasn't a rapist, he wouldn't be threatened
by this list," Ms. Lane said. "I think it's admirable that men in
this school have been saying the word 'rape' and are being angry at the same
time," said Jessica True, 23, a freshman from Takoma Park. "We're
forced to accept the fact we're potential rape victims everyday," said
Kelly Maron, 20, a sophomore from La Plata studying art and women's studies.

Question:
what if a bunch of guys got together on campus and posted fliers around the
university saying, “NOTICE: These women are potential rape liars,” and listed
the names of many female students on campus they never met and knew nothing
about. What if a female student who saw her name publicly put on such a list
actually was a victim of rape? How would she feel? I would imagine that she
would probably feel devastated at the lack of humanity.

And
also, what do they mean by “potential”? I have seen these actions defended by
those say that such statements are justified because, theoretically, everyone
can perform the motor functions of the act of rape. Well, first of all, that’s
factually incorrect, because it’s including the disabled and the handicapped
among them. But beyond that, the word “potential” has different meanings. There
is the potential of one’s body, but there is also the potential of one’s
character; their strength of will and conscience. And call me crazy, but when
it comes to rape, I don’t think everyone has it in them. And I think it’s
bordering on sexism, if not the essence of sexism, to say that everyone does,
so long as that “everyone” is all men.

But
beyond that, it bears mention that the word potential doesn’t just mean
“possible.” Let’s go to Thesaurus.com and search for synonyms. And guys, as I’m
going through each of these, imagine that each synonym is immediately followed
by “rapist” immediately followed by your name.

Words
that mean the same as potential: abeyant, budding, conceivable, dormant,
embryonic, future,
hidden,
imaginable, implied,
inherent,
latent,
likely,
lurking, plausible, possible,
prepatent, probable,
quiescent,
thinkable, undeveloped, unrealized, within realm of possibility.Language, as
we all know, is not finite or fixed; it is, as they say, socially constructed. It can be read many
different ways, and they know this. Indeed, since many of these Feminists likely study the postmodernist
philosophies of deconstruction in the humanities (and in Women’s Studies in
particular), they should know this better than anyone. When Feminists seek to raise our consciousness on the nature of sexual
harassment and hostile environments, they often tell us that it does not matter
how the message is intended; it only matters how it is received. And since they
know that many will perceive the word “potential” not just to mean that it is
possible for those they name to rape, but that it is likely for them to do so (a message which is reinforced by the big
word “NOTICE” right in front of their name), they should certainly know better.

And
we have to ask: how does this really help victims of sexual assault? It
doesn’t. It doesn’t help anyone.

Earlier this year at
Oberlin College, a group calling itself “Take Back the Night” posted signs
across campus identifying a freshman as “Rapist of the Month.” The freshman, an
18-year-old studying philosophy, recalls the day the signs went up. He was getting his mail
when he noticed students crowded in front of a bulletin board. They were
reading a sign – a sign calling him a rapist. “My initial reaction was complete
shock, complete disbelief,” says the freshman, who requested his name not be
published. “My friends gathered around and said, ‘Hey, what’s this all about?’”
He tore the sign down, along with several others on campus. The next few days were
spent denying the accusation – to fiends, acquaintances, and the media. “I
haven’t even dated at Oberlin,” he says. ‘I don’t drink. I don’t do drugs. I
couldn’t have gotten myself in that kind of situation.’ Adds friend Stacy
Tolchin: ‘"He’s probably almost boring."

Campus officials
investigated but failed to find who posted the signs. The rumor is that it was
a case of mistaken identity: the signs had the right first name but not the
last. Many students at the small liberal arts school south of Cleveland say the
signs went too far. ‘They tried and convicted him right there,’ freshman Ryan
Maltese says. ‘For the rest of his time here, whenever he approaches a woman in
any kind of romantic atmosphere, it’s going to be in her mind: ‘Did this guy
rape someone?’’

Such tactics are not
surprising, says junior Ted Chapman, sitting in the courtyard outside the
Student Union. He says tensions have been so high the last couple of years that
he has virtually quit dating. Friend Dave Roscky nods in agreement. Nearby, sophomore
Emily Lloyd says men are missing the point. “So many women get their lives
totally ruined by being assaulted and not saying anything. So if one guy gets
his life ruined, maybe it balances out.” The man next to her, a long-haired
freshman in glasses, disagrees. ‘All I can think is what would I do if my name
was up there on that sign?’ he says. ‘What would I do?’ Ms. Lloyd shoots back:
‘Do you know what you’d do if you were raped?’ There is a tense silence as the
freshman studies the grass in front of him. Finally, he looks up. "Well, I know
one thing," he says, "I wouldn’t put up a sign."

“It
balances out?” Here we have another woman who, just like Assistant Dean of
Students Catherine Comins, believes that it does not matter if men have their
lives ruined by false accusations of rape. It’s all justified – and why?
Because some women are victims of rape. It should go without saying that both
victims of rape and victims of false accusations of rape deserve our compassion
and support. But this is not what this woman, nor what this particular group
calling itself “Take Back the Night” believes.

“Steps
to Preventing Rape. #1: Men should keep to well-lit areas. #2: Men should wear
bells around their necks at all times. #3: Men should be accompanied by
protection officers. #4: Men should refrain from putting drugs in women’s
drinks. #5: Men should avoid attacking women.” And lastly, in all caps: “REAL
MEN DON’T RAPE.”

Why do people do bad
things? Usually, because they can. Those who posted this thought that the
academic environment was such that messages of denigrating men would be
tolerated. And they were right. For how many years exactly was this poster up?
We don’t know. But too many. And let’s stop and think for second: if we were to live in a world where people who believe, say
and do things like these were completely unopposed, what kind of world would
that be? Is that a world we would want to live in? I hope we all see what is
going on here: male students are being publicly insulted, humiliated, and
ostracized, and they are told that they deserve it based upon their genetic
code. And again, we have to ask: how does this message help victims of sexual
assault? How does this help anyone? And if it’s not about helping victims of
sexual assault, we are well within our rights to ask: what is it about?

On
the other side of Canada, at Simon Frasier University, the Women’s Center hosts
what they call the Male Allies project. On
their website it says, “Though still in its conceptual form, the male allies
project is the brainchild of the women’s centre designed to bring
self-identified men together to talk about masculinity and its harmful effects
on both men and women. We know that many men are concerned with the way
masculinity denigrates women by making them into sexual objects, is homophobic,
encourages violence, and discourages emotional expression. It is the hope of
the women’s centre that the male allies project will help men address these
concerns in conjunction with other men and allow them an opportunity to
reimagine what masculinity could be.”

I
wonder, what would it be like if we were to replace the “male and female” with “white
and black”? What would that sound like? “The black allies project is the
brainchild of the White People’s Centre designed to bring self-identified
blacks together to talk about the social construct of blackness and its harmful
effects on both whites and blacks. We know that many blacks are concerned with
the way blackness encourages gang violence, the rape of white women, promotes
drug use, theft, and general thuggery. It is the hope of the White People’s
Center that the Black Allies project will help blacks address these concerns in
conjunction with other blacks and allow them to reimagine what blackness could
be.”

Where
and when would you imagine a promotion of such a perspective taking place? Maybe
in the South during the era of Jim Crow? Moving on.

At
Princeton university, a female student who was an alleged victim of an earlier rape
and a sex-assault victim advocate falsely accused a man of rape at a Take Back
the Night rally, and her friends started a gossip campaign against the man she
accused. But after he accusation became public and a formal investigation of
her complaint turned up nothing, she printed a retraction in the campusnewspaper The Daily Princetonian,which is available online. I think it deserves to be quoted at length:

I wish to make the community aware that some of the statements I have
made recently on the editorial page of The Daily Princetonian and at the Take
Back the Night march have been incorrect. I believe it is absolutely essential
that I clarify my story so that no unfair accusations continue to be made by
myself or others against any of my fellow classmates or other members of the
university community. Despite my comments to the contrary, I never brought any
official charges of sexual harassment or assault against any Princeton student.
Consequently, no student has ever been dismissed or suspended from Princeton
University as a result of a sexual harassment or assault offense committed
against me.

I never intended for anyone to be hurt by my statements and I
wholeheartedly apologize to anyone who either took offense or felt as if they
were personally injured by my letter and speech. Rather than attempting to
achieve any type of revenge toward my alleged assailant, I made my statements
in The Daily Princetonian and at the Take Back the Night march in order to
raise awareness for the plight of the campus rape victims. Although I want
sympathy and support for my fellow victims, I do not want to create an
uncomfortable academic or social environment for any other Princeton University
student. Because of these comments, a certain individual has been wrongly
accused and is being pursued for a crime he did not commit. Although I have
never met this individual or spoken to him, I would like to utilize this public
forum to specifically apologize to him. In fact, the student I identified as my
assailant in conversation with many members of this community was not the
person who raped me. He coincidentally left Princeton on his own accord around
the time I was raped but his leaving the university for personal reasons and my
rape are completely unrelated.

I urge students who are knowledgeable of this
situation to cease blaming this person for my attack. In several personal
conversations and especially at the Take Back The Night march, I have been
overcome with emotion. As a result, I was not as coherent or accurate in my
recounting of events as a situation as delicate as this demands. I hope this
letter definitively clarifies all questionable aspects of my story. Two years
ago I made the decision not to prosecute the true assailant. Now I do not have
the right to make unfounded statements about others. Therefore, I once again
apologize to any individuals who have been personally injured or verbally
attacked as a result of my statements. This statement is one I have chosen to
make voluntarily. Thank you for listening.

Well,
we do have to give her some credit for coming clean. At the same time, not only
has she done incredible harm to an innocent male student by making a false
accusation, she has done harm to victims of sexual assault.

There
is something that needs to be said about gatherings and demonstrations by
activist groups in general that applies in these cases. And that is whenever
you immerse yourself within a peer group many of whom dogmatically believe every
claim of victimization by a member of that group, and who you know will accept
unquestioningly anything you say, so long as you claim to be a victim, there is
a temptation among the less stable to get swept in the moment and just start
saying anything that comes to mind. But you have to make sure that if you point
the finger at someone in the middle of a frenzied mob of people, and accuse
them of a crime (especially a crime of violence), once you point the finger at
someone, there’s no going back from that point. She herself says that she got
swept up in it, saying, that she was “overcome with emotion” in “several personal
conversations and especially at the Take Back The Night march,” which
interfered with her ability to make sound judgments.

Which
leads us to a problematic mentality that is an undercurrent among some of these
advocates, and the Boston rape crisis center (which supports the Clothesline
Project, another anti-rape demonstration) just comes right out and saysit better than I ever could, saying “The Clothesline Project is there to
provoke a reaction - but the thing about emotional reactions to traumatic
events is that there’s no wrong reaction.”

Assuming that this center
is speaking literally – and there’s no reason to assume otherwise - if someone is falsely accused of rape and they lose their
jobs, their friends, or their marriages, would this rape crisis center support
the idea that it gives them the right harass and intimidate every woman that
claims to be a rape victim? No wrong reaction whatsoever? Tell that to the young man at Princeton who was pursued,
ostracized, and persecuted because he was falsely accused of rape by someone
who was “overcome with emotion” at Take Back the Night rallies that there is no
wrong reaction. Tell that to the rape victims at that university who will now have
a harder time being believed because of it.

There
is an attitude among some that so long as they are victims of a traumatic
event, or not even that – so long as they adopt the label of victim (no proof
required) - they immediately shed all of their adult responsibilities, and no
matter how much harm they cause to innocent people – whether men or women – they
think it’s all ok. But it’s not ok. And with that being said, let’s talk about
the Clothesline Project in our next video, where we’ll discuss more rape
hysteria by students, before moving on to faculty and administrators.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

For
our first video/blog post on misandry as it occurs in the spoken and written word in
education, we’ll focus on one of the most anti-male universities on the face of
the West: Duke University. In the hopes of starting this series on common
ground, we’ll talk about Duke’s 2006 false rape case, a story which many people
know a little about, a few know a lot about, and none know as much as Brooklyn
University professor K.C. Johnson, who co-authored the book Until Proven
Innocent, a highly-recommended chronicle on the infamous false rape case, and blogs at Durham-In-Wonderland.
Although racism against the falsely accused students is also a critical element
of the story, I’m going to focus on the prejudice and the presumption of guilt on
the basis of gender which, as we have seen and will continue to see, affects
all men and all boys in education, regardless of color.

Seligmann at an ATM during the "rape."

In
2006 at Duke university, three male students who were members of the university
lacrosse team were falsely accused of raping a stripper at a party. At the
outset, the accused denied the charges. There were multiple problems with the accusation. The accuser changed her story and the names of the men she
accused many times. The DNA found on Crystal Mangum, the accuser, did not match the men she accused. The stripper who came to the lacrosse house on the night of the party declared to reports that she never saw a rape occur, and that Mangum had told her to put marks on her to make it appear she had been assaulted. By the time the
case was over, there were so many problems with the accuser’s story, and so
much evidence in contradiction to it, that instead of acquitting the three
young men, the district attorney, in an extremely rare move by our justice system, declared them innocent.

Wanted: bearers of Y-Chromosomes

But
before they were officially declared innocent, and even while much of the
evidence pointed to their innocence, these three students were subjected to a brutal
hostility that had come to characterize far too much of academic culture. Some
students paraded a banner reading “castrate,” others distributed what amounted
to wanted posters throughout the campus with pictures of the lacrosse team. Protestors showed up outside the lacrosse house banging pots and pans, and elsewhere walked around carrying signs saying "don't be a fan of rapists." At one point, a lacrosse player was surrounded by protestors and ordered to confess. Instead of protecting the students’ due process rights, the Duke
president Richard Brodhead pandered to every political interest, looked the
other way in the face of a bloodthirsty crowd that presumed their guilt, suspended
the team and fired the coach.

The Listening Statement

Many
faculty and administrators in education in general go out of their way to appear
gender-sensitive, and to speak out against prejudice. But in this case, and in
many others as we will see, when that hatred is directed at men and boys, no
one employed at the university seems to notice, much less care. On the
contrary, as Duke protestors were shouting “confess” “confess,” banging pots
and pans and carrying banners reading “castrate,” 88 Duke published in the campus
newspaper that came to be known as the “Listening Statement” laced with a
presumption of guilt against the three accused, and turning a blind eye to the
presumption of guilt espoused by many of the protestors. An
excerpt from the statement reads:

Regardless
of the results of the police investigation, what is apparent everyday now is
the anger and fear of many students who know themselves to be objects of racism
and sexism; who see illuminated in this moment’s extraordinary spotlight what
they live with everyday. The students know that the disaster didn’t begin on
March 13 and won’t end with what the police say or the court decides. Like all
disasters, this one has a history…to the students speaking individually and to
the protestors making collective noise, thank you for not waiting and for
making yourselves heard.

Lynchings: a historic male privilege

Indeed,
this is a story of prejudice and hatred based upon one’s possession of a particular
genetic code. And it does have a history, but not the one Duke professors are
referring to. Our society has a dark history of overreacting to accusations of
rape, too often to the point of assaulting men and boys who are wrongly
accused. From the hanging trees of the south during the days of racial
repression, to the overprotectiveness of fathers that sometimes results in the assault and murder of their daughters' boyfriends. Contrary to the lies
of certain gender ideologues, we have always lived in a culture that is
hypersensitive toward certain forms of male sexual impropriety, even to the
point of reacting with gender-based violence

﻿

This is what they call "taking a stand against gender-based violence." Noticeanything strange?

﻿﻿Protecting
female students from retaliation when they make allegations of sexual assault
is a key concern of education administrators, and is reinforced by a directive by the Department of Education. But no such concern is voiced in education for
men and boys who are wrongly accused, to the point that students can openly
advocate gender-based violence and male students in not an individual, but a
community effort. The very act of castration is a form of violence directed
against males. What these students are essentially doing is using hate speech
to advocating a hate crime, and they are doing so out of the presumption that those
accused are guilty because they are male. Although academia has an evolved
understanding about recognizing and preventing retaliation against female
students, the Duke case demonstrates that it is it is still in the Stone Age in
doing the same for men and boys who are falsely accused of rape.

In Until
Proven Innocent, Professor K.C. Johnson recounts the words of coach Mike
Pressler: “the faculty was a hell of a lot worse than the students. It was
appalling. These are our educators” (104). Dr. Johnson documents cases in the
chapter “Academic McCarthyism” where faculty used their bully pulpits to sway
their classrooms against the three accused students. Here’s a few passages:

In
late March, [professor] Reeve Huston opened a class by saying that he needed to
break his silence on the lacrosse episode and talk about what he had concluded
from his research on the topic: there was a long-prevalent problem of alpha
males assaulting black females in America and there had been a sexual assault
at 610 North Buchanan.

As
the professor spoke, Ryan McFayden text-messaged Rob Schroeder, asking if they
should walk out. Huston plowed ahead, declaring it obvious that ‘an ejaculation
had occurred.’ Senior Casey Carroll had
had enough. He got up and left the room. McFayden, Schroeder, Jennison, and
Breck Archer followed their teammate. As they left, Huston said, ‘Don’t worry,
this won’t affect your grade.’ The female lacrosse player remained. She later
reported that Huston had devoted the entire session to his ‘analysis’ of the
case.

Down
the hall from Huston’s class, several other players were taking professor Sally
Deutsch’s course in U.S. history…Deutsch departed from the syllabus and
announced that she would discuss how white men, especially in the South, have
disrespected and sexually assaulted black females. ‘We all knew what she was
doing,’ lacrosse player Tony McDevitt later recalled. ‘A couple people asked
questions to try to get her off track, but she persisted. It lasted half an
hour.

Even
after it became clear that the three young men were likely wrongly accused, some
faculty just wouldn’t let it go. After Duke president lifted the suspensions of
falsely accused students Reade Seligman and Collin Finnerty, professor Karla Holloway resigned her position on the Campus Cultures Initiative in protest. Throughout
the spectacle, in order to appease various political interests, the Duke administration made public statements that leaned toward a
presumption of guilt against the three young men accused. As an example, Joe Alleva, Duke's athletic director, said, "Unfortunately, they're young men, and sometimes young men make bad decisions, make some bad judgments. And that's what this whole thing incident is about." While
many of them stated that they will not stand for sexual assault, not a single
one of them publicly stated they would not stand for false accusations of rape.

Seligmann on CBS

The
behavior of the faculty and administration led Reade Seligmann, one of the
falsely accused who was filmed on a security camera at an ATM at the time of
the alleged incident, to say on CBS, “I chose Duke to be my home for four years.
And to see your professors go out and slander you and say these horrible,
untrue things about you, and to have your administration just cut us lose for,
for, based on nothing. Duke took that stance that ‘we wouldn’t stand for this
behavior [i.e. sexual misconduct].’ They didn’t want to take a chance on
standing up for the truth. I can’t imagine representing a school that didn’t
want to represent me."

If
the faculty were truly concerned with not pre-judging the students accused and
adding to the hysteria and public hatred directed against them on the basis of
their birth group, why did they wait until 8 months after the fact, at which
point the case was 2/3 of the way over, when most of the evidence that had come
out strongly in in favor of the defendants? Why didn’t they clarify their
statement when people were still banging pots and pans, carrying castrate
banners and distributing wanted posters, when such a clarification would have
done the most good? And if they truly stand against prejudice on the basis of
race, sex, or class, why don’t they care about the fact that the greatest amount
of prejudice was directed against the three young men? If the faculty care so
much about listening to their students, why aren’t they listening to all of
them?

The
answer, of course, is that the Clarifying Letter is not about a re-affirmation
of the values of equality and diversity that, like many such faculty, the
faculty at Duke claim to possess but don’t; it’s about covering their behinds,
because as of January 2007, now that the evidence is strongly suggesting the
three young men were falsely accused, and that people speaking for 5 academic
departments and 10 academic programs had publicly had earlier urged the
community to presume their guilt, the university could be in serious legal
trouble.

In
his book Tenured Radicals – How Politics has Corrupted our Higher Education,
Roger Kimball describes the culture at Duke University, “For months nearly the
entire faculty fell into one of two camps: those who demanded the verdict first
and the trial later, and those whose silence enabled their vigilante colleagues
to set the tone” (xxxi). Which
of the two groups is innocent? When it comes to political disagreements, many
faculty espouse the advice Polonius gave to his son Laertes in Shakespeare’s
Hamlet, who says “give every man thy ear but few thy voice.” Which is generally
a good professional policy, when disagreements are small. But when
prejudice develops from an attitude among a scattered few to a connected
subculture, when that subculture becomes entrenched, and when it metastasizes
to the point that it manifests itself in institutionalized hatred and bigotry, there
comes a point when remaining silent is no longer a virtue, or as a great man
said, “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” The truth is that every member
of the faculty and administration is a moral stakeholder in their respective
universities. When it comes to institutionalized prejudice, and when it comes
to civil rights, among those who have a stake in such a structure, there is no
such thing as an uninvolved bystander.

Wendy Murphy, Empress of Evil

The
events drew responses from academia outside Duke as well. As Roger Kimball
reports in Tenured Radicals, “Syracuse University…decided not to accept as
transfers any students from the Duke lacrosse team – not just the three accused
chaps, mind you, but anyone
contaminated by having played lacrosse for Duke” (xxvii). Law professor Wendy
Murphy, an attorney and sex-assault victim advocate, was a frequent media spokesperson
on the Duke case. At one point commented, “I’m really tired of people
suggesting that you’re somehow un-American if you don’t respect the presumption
of innocence, because you know what that sounds like to a victim? Presumption
you’re a liar.” And in case anyone missed it, this is a person who teaches law,
prosecutes people for sex crimes, and is regarded as an authority in the sex-assault
victim advocacy community.

Wendy
Murphy reveals a problem among many Feminists and sex-assault victim advocates:
the pervasive belief that women who claim to be raped are always telling the
truth. When the false accuser Crystal Gail Mangum was examined, “the doctors
and nurses were unanimous in finding no physical evidence of the attack
described by Crystal – that is, a brutal assault by three, five, or twenty
varsity athletes, lasting half an hour. No bruises. No bleeding. No vaginal or
anal tearing. No grimacing, sweating, changes in vital signs, or other symptoms
ordinarily associated with the serious pain of which she complained” (Johnson 32).

But
none of that mattered to the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner, or SANE nurse, the
last one to see Crystal. “Tara Levicy, the ‘SANE nurse,’ was to play a
little-known but critical role in bringing about the prosecution of the
lacrosse players. A strong feminist who had played a part in a Vagina Monologues production [which is a
play hosted on many college campuses, which we’ll get to later] and who saw
herself as an advocate for rape victims, Levicy was later to acknowledge that
she had never doubted the truthfulness of a single rape accuser” (Johnson 33).

Tara Levicy, In-SANE Nurse

“Over
the subsequent ten months, Levicy would repeatedly tell police that she thought
Mangum had been raped, adjusting her theories to bat aside new evidence that
the charge was false” (Johnson 34). Defense attorney Joe Cheshire later said, “Tara
Levicy’s stridency and inability to even examine an opposite point of view had
a lot to do with the genesis of this case. There are people like her in hospitals
all over this country” (Johnson 378).

You
would think that after this event Duke would be content to lay low and let the
dust settle for a while. You would think that if they did anything, at least it
wouldn’t be rash, especially in the area of sexual misconduct. No. In 2009 Duke adopted a new sexual misconduct policy that radically broadens the definition
of nonconsensual sex, in effect stripping many male students of due process
rights. The policy states, “real or perceived power differentials may create an
unintentional atmosphere of coercion.”

Our education system is overrun by a group of misguided ideologues who
define their existence by words like equality and diversity, but have forgotten
what those words actually mean. They live under the false consciousness that
being progressive is not about eliminating prejudice and bigotry on the basis
of sex, but about “redistributing” that prejudice and bigotry so that it
changes sides, changes faces, and changes victims.

But
what about the more moderate among those in the academia? Surely not all of
them are like that. In what I believe to be most revealing lesson the Duke case can teach
us about the culture of higher education, that answer comes from the behavior
of one of the most moderate members of the Group of 88. It is an element of the
case that is almost never spoken of, and K.C. Johnson tells the story HERE.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Misandry is sexism against men and boys as a group, or against
individual men and boys based on their status as males. It can be expressed in
a myriad of ways. One way is by expressing hostility - either by direct
insults, or by implying that males are inherently unintelligent, unnecessary,
or dangerous. It is expressed by speaking of men and boys as if they deserve
our indifference, which has the effect of dehumanizing them and rendering them
more vulnerable to the slings and arrows of the world. It is expressed by
acting as if the well-being and vulnerabilities of women and girls are more
important than those of men and boys, or by enforcing one rule for men, and
another for women.

In education especially, misandry can be expressed by the
assertion that a particular action, idea, body of knowledge, perspective or
invention is illegitimate simply because it was created or performed by someone
with a Y-chromosome. When certain individuals act like or claim that there is a
dark side to male nature and a good side to female nature, while denying,
despite all the evidence to the contrary, that there is a dark side to female
nature and a good side to male nature by dismissing them as “just myths and
stereotypes,” they are in effect saying men are bad and women are good, which
is misandry. Misandry is the belief that the worst among males is
representative of men and boys in general, or “normative masculinity,” or “male
culture,” or whatever broad brush is used to tar men as a group.

I believe that suspending a 9-year-old boy for calling a teacher “cute,” or for singing “I’m sexy and I know it,” or for punishing boys – but not girls – who spank the bottoms of their classmates is also a product of
misandry. In this sense, almost everything that I will cover in The War on Male Students – from the neglect of their educational needs, to the presence of
anti-male hostility, to the systemic destruction of their civil rights - is a
product or byproduct of misandry. But what I will address in this particular
line of videos and blog posts titled “Misandry in Education” is not so much misandry in the
form of actions, but misandry as it appears in the spoken and written word. And
while it can be reasonably said that not all, or even most, faculty,
administrators, or even students express sexism against men and boys, it also
bears mention that they don’t have to. Prejudice and hatred for men and boys –
just as it is for any other group – does not have to be consistently
all-encompassing to create a hostile learning environment. All it has to be is
consistently unopposed.

Here, we will be unapologetically critical of the misandry of
Radical Feminism and its influence in education. Moderate Feminists are quick
to tell us that “not all Feminists are like that.” While that is certainly true
- and I do name the exceptions – it is not a justifiable reason in and of
itself to ignore or sweep under the carpet the sexism expressed by those who
are like that.

At first, the lack of opposition to misandry by faculty and
administrators may seem understandable. Decades ago, like the frog in the
boiling water, many of them could not even identify the problem. And also, most
of the misandry in academia is a politicized form of sexism, and political
disagreements are often best avoided.

But when prejudice develops from an attitude among a scattered few
to a connected subculture, when that subculture becomes entrenched, and when it
metastasizes to the point that it begins to eat away at the civil rights of
those it targets, remaining silent is no longer a virtue. As we will see, misandry
in education is not merely a collection of infrequent and disassociated
anomalies arising from individuals uninfluenced by supportive or acquiescent
peer groups. On the contrary, it is a culturally pervasive in education in a way
that cannot be reasonably characterized as incidental, coincidental, or even
accidental.

On a related note, there
are good-faith efforts springing up within academia to
help men and boys, particularly in terms of educational attainment. I created a video and blogged about one of them, which is Project MALES at UT Austin, which
hosted two symposia which I attended, at one of which I volunteered. While good
hearts and good minds are working in such groups, they do have limitations.
First, many such groups and initiatives (with few exceptions, one of them being
Project MALES) are isolated, poorly funded, and live only as long as they can
produce immediate results, or as long as the particular educator who champions
that particular cause remain employed at that facility, a phenomenon Richard
Whitmire documented in his book Why Boys
Fail.

Second, absolutely none of them as of right now, September 2012, are
addressing the destruction of the civil rights of male students, and none of
them are investigating and developing the means to combat the subculture of
misandry which contributes to a hostile learning environment for male students.
And while these groups do have their hands full with the issue of educational
attainment alone, the fact remains that we need a strong and networked voice in
education to stand up for men and boys who are denigrated by sexism or have
their civil rights violated, and currently no such voice in academia exists.

Furthermore, after reviewing the general culture and structure of
academia for some time, I am convinced that groups which focus on the
inequities in educational attainment for men and boys will never get enough
funding for operations on a large enough scale, nor will they ever get the
approval they need from the right people in the right places, nor will academia
ever engage the lion’s share of its networking and funding potential to helping
male students until the cultural barriers of misandry and careerism are
weakened or removed.

Friday, September 21, 2012

This post is
long past due, and perhaps should have been the first post I made. Better late
than never, I suppose. I’m not sure whether many will read it, but I feel it’s
necessary to put it out there.

Men: overrepresented among the most brutal, filthy, and deadly jobs

I am an
advocate for equality for men and boys. Some people call me an advocate for men and boys, an
advocate for gender equity in education, or a men’s rights activist (or an MRA
for short). My online name is TCM, which stands for “The Common Man,” which is
indicative of the focus of the Men’s Movement on the inequities
disproportionately facing men and boys at the bottom of society, such as men’s
overrepresentation among prisons (~90%), military deaths (98%), suicides (80%),
workplace fatalities (93%), homelessness (85%), illness, school dropouts and under-enrollments,
and others. My specialization is education issues.

Mission
and Values:

·Educate the public on the issues and
needs of men and boys, especially in academic matters.

·Advocate the ideals of equality and
social justice, question the assumptions of traditional gender roles that are
limiting and harmful to men and boys, and compliment the current discourse on
gender equality.

·Take a stand against the phenomenon of
misandry – sexism against men and boys.

·Advocate a philosophy of
non-violence.

·Advocate the end of the zero-sum
approach to gender equity by stressing that for every women’s issue there is a
men’s issue, and that both sexes deserve our compassion and support.

“Waterloo
Regional Police on Thursday announced that a sexual assault occurred on the
University of Waterloo campus on Monday, Sept. 17. The statement
from Waterloo Regional Police reads in part:

'As
a result of investigation by Major Case Branch investigators, it has been
determined that a rape described at the University of Waterloo campus on
September 17, 2012 occurred.'

No charges
have been filed.

False rape
accusations are treated very seriously at the University of Waterloo. A guide
to campus and community resources can be found at http://uwaterloo.ca/police/sexual-assault. The
university appreciates the efforts of Waterloo Regional Police and the
University of Waterloo Police Service in this investigation.”

“Waterloo
Regional Police on Thursday announced that a sexual assault alleged to have
happened on the University of Waterloo campus on Monday, Sept. 17, did not
occur. The statement
from Waterloo Regional Police reads in part:

'As
a result of investigation by Major Case Branch investigators, it has been
determined that the female’s initial allegations to police were not true. The
sexual assault previously described at the University of Waterloo campus on
September 17, 2012, did not occur. Investigators are appreciative of public
assistance received during the investigation.'

No charges
have been laid.

The
University of Waterloo remains committed to ensuring the safety of all members
of our campus community. Safety tips and a full outline of our campus safety
services and procedures is available online at http://uwaterloo.ca/police/personal-safety-guide. Sexual
assault is treated very seriously at the University of Waterloo. A guide to
campus and community resources can be found at http://uwaterloo.ca/police/sexual-assault. The
university appreciates the efforts of Waterloo Regional Police and the
University of Waterloo Police Service in this investigation.”

Now, what did
the initial report sound like? Did the university take a dispassionate stance,
or did they automatically side with the accuser? If you have been following The War on Male Students, you probably already know the answer. But if you don’t, here it is, as well as something else besides:

“On Monday, September 17, between 10
and 10:30 p.m., a female student was sexually assaulted
by two males while walking through the west cul de sac between Village 1 and
Mackenzie King Village.

Police provided the following
descriptions of the suspects, who fled after the assault:

The ongoing investigation is being led
by Waterloo Regional Police, supported by University of Waterloo Police. We
will update the campus community as more information becomes available. Anyone
with information is asked to contact Waterloo Regional Police at 519-650-8500
ext. 3310, University of Waterloo Police at 519-888-4567 ext. 22222, or call
Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-8477.

The safety of our students and all
members of our campus community is of paramount concern at the University of
Waterloo. As a result of this incident, campus police have increased patrols in
the area of the student residences. Students, faculty, staff and other members
of our community are encouraged to be alert to danger and report any suspicious
activity to campus police.

When walking,

Follow a major road at night, or a
well-lit path

Walk at a steady pace and with confidence
near the curb

Avoid dark entrances and shrubs

Do not walk home alone at night — make
arrangements with a friend to meet and walk home together, call for a
ride, or use one of the resources offered by the university.

Further information about campus
safety resources, including our shuttle service, can be found online at https://uwaterloo.ca/police/safety-resources.
The shuttle service is available from the first day of registration to the last
day of exams. It leaves regularly from the Student Life Centre at about 7:00
p.m. in the winter, at 9:00 p.m. in the summer and runs until 2:00 a.m. Women have first priority for rides. Emergency
intercoms, with flashing blue lights, are located throughout the campus.”

From a perspective of gender equity, some things
come to mind:

In the final
report, the university tells us that “sexual assault is treated very seriously
at the University of Waterloo.” Here we have the usual: whenever a false rape
accusation occurs on campus, instead of telling us how seriously they treat
false accusations (which they can’t legitimately say because they don’t), the
university tells us that they instead take very seriously the crime that was
the subject of the false accusation. The same thing happened at my alma mater, A&M-Commerce: the initial report was spun as if an assault had absolutely occurred, and the final report focused primarily on the plight of rape victims, including a shadowy and fear-inspiring picture of a rapist (pictured below).

In
addition to telling us that a rape had absolutely occurred, the initial report
says that the suspect was “male, white,
19 years old, 5’6”, with a heavy build, and wearing a red hat.” I wouldn't like to be a male student who just casually came to school wearing a red hat that day,
or a man who anyone in the university had ever seen wearing a red hat. Just
think if a guy who had not seen the report was going to class and someone in
the class said, “hey didn’t you wear a red hat last semester?” And regardless
as to whether he did or did not respond by saying “oh yeah, yeah I did,” and regardless
as to whatever the police said in a final report, it wouldn’t matter. Thanks to
the university, he would already have been socially convicted.

Concerning the
false rape accusation, the university tells us “no charges have been filed.” That was a mistake. A commenter on Reddit argued that no charges
should be filed against the accuser, for this reason: “This never got to a prosecution
stage. Once she presses false charges with the police and prosecution, then
it becomes serious.”

I disagree, for this reason: punishments for false rape accusations
- even light forms of punishment - deter future false accusers. Given that the
lack of deterrence may promote future false rape accusations, and given that
rape is such an emotionally charged accusation that it sometimes compels people
to make vigilante attacks against the person accused (which may result in
injury or death - see HERE and HERE and HERE), adopting a policy of deterrence in regards to false rape
accusations - even if the punishment exists in light forms - is the best
policy, given that it may save someone's life down the road. And it bears
mention that when a university publicly presumes guilt against the person
accused, it has the potential to put a man’s life in danger.

Rosa Parks

Lastly, in describing the shuttle services, the
university tells us “Women have first priority for
rides.” In
case the University of Waterloo hasn’t noticed, men are the majority of victims
of street violence, including and especially homicides. If whites were the
majority of victims of violence, would they tell black students that white
students have priority over blacks? Need we remember the case of Rosa Parks (pictured right), an
African-American woman who sparked a national civil rights debate because she
refused to give up her seat on the bus for a white person? In this case, male students aren’t being told they have to sit at the
back of the bus; they can’t even get on the bus.

An imbalance in resources between male and female victims, a
cultural crusade against male criminality with a casual indifference
toward female criminality, and discrimination against male students on the
basis of sex, these are things which we should see as a structural inequities. But
to a modern university, none of these things are perceived as inequities or
discriminations against male students; it is business as usual.

Several things need to change at the University of Waterloo:

"In Harmony With Truth"

#1 – In the initial campus reports, Waterloo needs to stop
reporting accusations of sexual misconduct as if they had absolutely occurred. The
university’s motto is “Concordia Cum Veritate,” which ironically means “in
harmony with truth.” It might be a good idea to practice that.

#2 - Charges need to be brought against the woman who made a false
rape accusation. This needs to become standard operating procedure, and the
University of Waterloo needs to advocate and support this.

#3 – Resources for the wrongly accused need to be in place at
Waterloo and posted at the university’s website.

#4 – The shuttle service needs to stop discriminating against male
students who wish to use the shuttles.

And there’s probably a few other changes Waterloo University needs
to make, but that’s good to go on for now.

Students at Waterloo University need to speak up. They need to
consult their administrators and tell them that what they are doing is not good
enough for the needs of male students. If the administrators refuse, I have
just the thing. College campuses across the west sponsor an event called “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes.” The intent of the event is to raise awareness of female
victims and to “stop men’s violence against women.”

Those crazy admins!

I propose that every University of Waterloo administrator who
thinks that these things are ok be given a red hat that they will put on, and then
(while wearing it) walk a mile through and around the University of Waterloo
campus. We’ll call it “Walk a Mile in His Red Hat.” Sounds catchy, eh?

UCLA welcomes male students to campus

Perhaps some university administrator may protest and say that
such a proposition is out of line. But why should they? Male students as a
group have all sorts of hostile and denigrating messages directed to them every
day, many of them approved by their university’s administration. Why should
university administrators object to experiencing for a brief punctuation of
time universities force male students to feel all the time?

Or maybe they just need to stop discriminating against male students
and call it a day, eh? :D

If you want to visit the world’s largest blog giving a voice to
victims of wrongful accusations of sexual assault, visit The Community of the
Wrongly Accused at www.cotwa.info. If you’d
like to learn more about discrimination against men and boys in education, visit the archive page for The War on Male Students.